Cooking for profit

We have no word in English for consomme but broth, and that is not an equivalent, but only a substitute. French cooks understand by consomme a clear soup as rich as melted jelly. Consomme royal is of the color of brandy, with little custards floating in it. Simmer a large fowl and two or more shanks of veal in a gallon )f water for three or four hours, and while it is cooking add the vegetables and seasonings. These should be the usual soup bunch (without parsnips or green onion tops, however), together with a stalk of celery, half a bay leaf, a teaspoonful of bruised pepper-corns and a sprig of green thyme or marjoram. When it has boiled long enough strain the broth into a saucepan. To clarify the consomme, chop a pound of lean beef fine, mix with it two whites of eggs and a cup of cold water. Then pour the broth to the beef, stir up and boil again. Strain through a napkin or jelly bag, season with salt, color with a teaspoonful of dissolved burnt sugar and remove every particle of grease. To make the floating custards take three or four yolks of eggs, raw, and mix with them a spoonful of the consomme. Pour into a slightly buttered saucer and steam it until done — 10 minutes. Cut the custard in diamond shapes and drop three or tour in each soup plate. Where it is not necessary to be extremely particular good clear soup can be obtained by letting the soup-stock set cold in a jar and after taking off the fat, pouring it off without disturbing the sediment. Strain through a napkin, make hot and add the spoonful of coloring and salt as before. Cost of material — chicken to be used in salad or patties 6, veal 16, vegetables 5, beef 10, eggs, 6; 37c for 2 quarts, or 3c per plate. 140— Vegetable Soup. 2 quarts of soup stock — 8 or 10 cups. 3 cups mixed vegetables. Seasonings. Take for the stock the liquor in which any kind of meat has been boiled — beef shank, mutton, heart, tongue, fowl, rabbit, etc., and corned beef liquor does very well. The richer the stock can be, of course the better it is. Strain it into the soup pot. Skim off most of the fat almost every kind of vegetable can be used. Take a piece of each and cut all into dice shapes, or, if to be very nice, cut vegetables in slices and stamp out little patterns with a tin cutter or the point of a tin funnel. There should be turnips white and yellow, carrot, pumpkin, celery, siring beans, green peas, onions, summer squash, cauliflower. If vegetables are scarce, a little parsnip and cabbage and potatoes can be used, but the latter put in late so as not to boil away. Boil the hard vegetables, such as carrots, turnips, onions, string beans and celery, together in a little saucepan first; then pour the water away and put the vegetables in the boiling stock, and add the easy-cooking kinds, such as cauliflower, asparagus heads and peas — whatever may be on hand. At last add apiece of red tomato, cut small, salt and pepper to taste and a tablespoonful of corn starch mixed in a cup with water. Cost — about 10c per quart or 8 plates 141— Baked Sea Bass. Scale and clean the fish; leave the head on if it is to be sent to table whole. Make a stuffing for it of 2 pressed cupfuls of bread crumbs, a small cupful of but-|